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Wednesday, January 14, 2015

An interview with Kyle B. Stiff

How's it hanging, gamebooklings? Excellent news: Sol Invictus, the sci-fi gamebook app and sequel to last year's award-winning Heavy Metal Thunder, is available for download. To celebrate this momentous occasion, I've managed to rustle up an interview with the game's author, Kyle B. Stiff. Read on for wily words of wondrous wisdom...

What's
with the name? 'Kyle B. Stiff'? That's a pseudonym, right?

If
only! No, I was blessed with an absurd name by my parents and
sisters. I thought about changing it so that I could be taken
seriously, but all my ideas were even more ridiculous than Kyle B.Stiff, so I figured I should just stick with that. I may put
something in the front to sound a little more respectable… Doctor?
Reverend? DJ? Lots of people put Doctor in front of their name to
sound more respectable, so I’ll probably end up going that route.

Can
you talk a little about the villains from HMT/Sol Invictus, the
satyr-like Invaders? Why create this specific type of alien
antagonist?

The
inspiration comes from the same thing that inspires all art: Satan.
Just kidding… or am I? I guess the horns work on a couple of
different levels. The first really is that its Satanic, its scary,
its very heavy metal. The second is that the Invaders aren’t that
“alien” compared to us. So its kind of like when you’re a kid
and you learn about Satan, hell, demons, its all pretty terrifying,
but then when you grow up, you do a little research and you find out
that the “horned god” was what we worshipped before Christians
started burning our lady shamans at the stake.

So
it comes from the idea of “demonizing” the enemy. From the
perspective of the humans in Heavy Metal Thunder, nothing is more
terrifying than a heavily-armed, black-armored Invader with two
rune-carved horns curling around either side of a featureless black
mask. The humans don’t know anything about the Invaders' culture,
homeworld, philosophies, religions; they just represent a hostile,
demonic, alien presence.

But
the Invaders are a lot like us… alright, this isn’t a spoiler,
this is just a train of thought. The Invaders have to expand because
their economy is a pyramid scheme just like ours. They could have
sent a handful of diplomats to Earth and said, “I know it’s
exciting to find out there’s life on other worlds, yadda yadda
yadda, but let’s get down to brass tacks: We need resources X, Y,
and Z, more land for our booming population, and LOTS of slave labor
to keep the whole thing running. Is there a way we can peacefully get
all that from you guys?” But that’s not how life works. Empires
find out pretty quick that it’s better to send an army if you want
to be taken seriously. The Invaders have a moral compass just like
ours, and some of their civilians may protest the idea of endless
expansion and endless war, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure
their leaders pull the same tricks ours do. I’m sure they have all
kinds of televised broadcasts showing how bad things were on Earth,
so instead of thinking, “Our people went to Earth to conquer
another species and take their world,” it’s a lot easier for
their citizens to sleep at night when they think, “We had to go to
Earth to stop all those evil dictators.”

What
are the last 3 books you've read?

DMT:
The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman (I admit I had to skip ahead to
the mind-blowing parts), Larry Niven’s The Magic Goes Away (which
was very interesting, and the version I found had some cool
illustrations by Esteban Maroto), and the incredibly badass Thor God
of Thunder: The God Butcher by Jason Aaron (and beautifully
illustrated by Esad Ribic).

Any
time a writer is asked something like this, I always wonder if
they’re lying. “Last three books? It would have to be The
Collected Works of Shakespeare… let’s see, Strunk and White’s
Elements of Style…” I guess if I was really being honest I would
fess up and admit to reading a novel’s worth of social media
notifications.

There's
a fairly pessimistic flavour to Heavy Metal Thunder - it's science
fiction that focuses on the losers of war rather than the winners (à
la Firefly, or Battlestar Galactica). Is there still room for an
optimistic, Star Trek-esque tone to science fiction - a message that
everything is going to be okay?

I’m
reminded of early 19th century thinking. They saw how the industrial
machine was taking off, and they thought, “People can make more
with less effort, therefore people are going to work four hours a
week and live lives of wealth and ease. Things can only get better!”
Fast forward a few years and the newly-invented machinegun was
tearing people to pieces on battlefields of unimaginable, nightmarish
proportions, and the common man found himself looking at a stack of
bills that no one could possibly pay. Instead of thinking “Well
this certainly sucks,” they figured that if they went deeper into
the machine then they would find utopia at the end of the tunnel. Now
we’re clicking on Facebook notifications out of habit, the
battefields have gotten even more nightmarish, and the stack of bills
have turned into something like that cube from Hellraiser. I can’t
even imagine a Star Trek-flavored future when our inner world of
emotion is either unexplored, suppressed, or in complete turmoil.

There’s
got to be another way, but I don’t know “the way”. So in my
stories I like to show people wrestling with that. Life is a
hellacious struggle, and the big goals that we aim for are mostly
delusions that keep us going. That sounds dark, but the other side of
the coin is that, to me, heroism only makes sense in a world of
darkness. The biggest badass in the world would have to be someone
who simply is not affected by all the different mind control schemes
constantly being thrown at us. He de-programs himself. He taps into
the power that lies at the root of all good things. He finds a way to
be happy even while enduring incredibly intense suffering. That’s
what makes a hero even more terrifying than the monsters and the
freaks that rule the world.

What
do you think the future holds for gamebooks, or for interactive
fiction in general? Are we going the way of the mobile app?

Of
course I’d love another renaissance of gamebooks, but even with the
popularity of CYOA back in the day, it’s one hard sell of a genre.
It has a lot of trouble gaining traction in the public consciousness.
If you want to make money as a game developer, make a game about a
shiny thing that spins around or goes into a hole; if you can make it
zombie themed, that’s even better. Otherwise, the land of gamebooks
is a freezing tundra where only the most merciless, die-hard
entertainers can survive. You have to care about this stuff to be
here. We have to adapt the way of the mobile app, otherwise we won’t
be noticed. I truly appreciate any readers who follow us along the
way. I’m going to dig in and keep doing what I do; I promise all
the readers out there that the tale of Cromulus has a lot more
twists, turns, and gore-drenched action in store before the war ends!